A decision support model based on GIS for vehicle routing

Aim at resolving the problems of how to route and schedule vehicles in a business logistics system where vehicles deliver products starting from and ending at a central depot to multiple retailers, a decision support model based on GIS, in which a two-phase heuristic algorithm is applied to route and schedule vehicles according to the different types of planning problems, is developed to minimize transportation costs for product delivery in this paper. A case for vehicle routing is solved by this decision support mode and the results shows that the suggested heuristic algorithm gives near optimal solutions.